


The Only One

by cruisedirector



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Accidental Voyeurism, Episode Related, Episode: s01e10 The Doctor Dances, Episode: s01e14 Faces, Episode: s02e08 Persistence of Vision, Episode: s02e25 Resolutions, F/M, Father Figures, Klingon, Maquis, New Earth, Nudity, POV First Person, Romance, Secrets, Starfleet Academy, Strong Female Characters, Vidiians, Vulcan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1997-01-31
Updated: 1997-01-31
Packaged: 2017-10-06 21:37:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/58008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cruisedirector/pseuds/cruisedirector
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>B'Elanna's take on Janeway and Chakotay's relationship and how she feels about it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Only One

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lrbowen](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Lrbowen).



I was the only one who saw them. The rest of the bridge crew guessed, but they weren't there--they can only imagine. I managed to keep Harry and Kes from seeing, and Tuvok...I think he didn't want to know. Tom begged me to tell him what I saw, but I never have. Maybe one day, if we're together, if he's serious about it, I'll tell him. It would make me feel good to tell someone I trusted--some night, lying in the same position as they were, together. It calls for--a kind of reverence, almost. That really sounds stupid, doesn't it, but I don't know how else to describe how I felt when I saw them.

Thinking back on it, I'm still jealous. Not of her, but of them: what they had. He looked so right with her, same as he always has beside her on the bridge. I think that was the end of my fantasies about him; at least the end of my fantasies about having him all to myself. He didn't belong with me any more than he belonged with Seska.

I guess that was also the first time I stopped thinking of her as an entity unto herself. Captain of a starship. It always seemed fitting that she should be on a different level than the rest of us, so I guess I never stopped to wonder whether she had feelings and needs that weren't getting expressed.

My relationship with Chakotay is pretty complicated. Before that Bothan came along, I thought my feelings about him were like the way I felt about my father--I always wanted to please him, I went out of my way to please him, but I could never get it right. In fact, the things I did which I thought would make him proud of me always backfired. But sometimes he would praise me in ways I never expected, like fighting to make me chief engineer of this ship. I remember my father fighting with my mother, trying to get her to let me take music lessons, when she kept insisting that I didn't have the talent or the patience, no Klingon female should waste her time on it...he said he'd been listening to me, and thought I was trainable. Of course, he didn't stick around--he let my mother make the final decisions about how I should be educated.

I suppose Chakotay did something similar when he turned me over to a starship captain for mentoring. Not that I'm blaming him for that--it was the best thing he ever did for me. But, at first, I didn't like feeling like it was important to him that I fit in with Starfleet. It wasn't my being Klingon that Chakotay didn't like, though; ironically, it everything else that made me Maquis. My temper, my refusal to stick with rules if there was an obvious advantage to breaking them--things I blame on my Klingon blood, but sometimes I think those are the parts of me which make me strong, and quick on my feet, and a good engineer. Getting split in half taught me a lot about that, even if he didn't understand.

After the Bothan got me started, I did let myself have fantasies about him--him and me. I'd thought a lot about him and Seska before, probably more than I should have. I told myself it was because she was my friend, and later, because he was my friend, and she had hurt him. But I spent a lot of time wondering what he was like as a lover. My own fantasies were pathetic, it sort of disgusts me to think about them now. If they'd just been about sex, it would have been OK, but I had stupid little dreams about him telling me he loved me, how he'd go with me anywhere, even if I decided to leave the ship, all sorts of crap that had nothing to do with what he's really like as a person. I didn't try to work out any of the real problems we had in our friendship, like how embarrassing I find some of his spiritual beliefs and how much I enjoy killing the food I eat.

I almost told the captain what the Bothan made me see, when I ran into her that night in the mess hall--now I'm so glad that I didn't. Probably I realized even then that he was falling in love with her. I was so angry with her, for a long time, after she almost abandoned him to Seska and the Kazon and then put him on report for recovering our technology from them, just because he didn't do it by the book...damn, I don't like to think about that. Especially since he thought she was right on both counts. She and I are nothing alike in that regard. There are times when you have to think with your fists--I do it too often, but I wish she'd do it a little faster sometimes...

But then, I am in no position to judge her, or to try to put myself in her shoes. She and Chakotay have that in common, the way they can immerse themselves in causes to the point where they seem to have lost their common sense. Even when he was in the Maquis, he was still Starfleet, and I never was even while I was at the Academy--I was in the Maquis to be a rebel, not because the defense of the colonies had overwhelmed every other committment in my life. I guess part of my crush on Chakotay had to do with that selflessness, and the fact that he never hurt anyone needlessly, no matter what they'd done to him.

Totally different from my crush on Tom, which is just as embarrassing in a different way. At least I'm starting to be able to admit that it's a crush. A lot like the ones I had at the Academy, on those red-blooded human Starfleet golden boys, pride of the Fleet. That's what Tom Paris makes me think of. Sure, I know he wasn't always a golden boy--stint in the Maquis, stint in jail--but compared to me, he's a prince. Son of an admiral, made it through the Academy. Really he only made two big mistakes, unlike me, who's made dozens. He's never screwed up with Janeway, which is not something I can say.

Then again, Tom doesn't hold anything I did in the Maquis or Starfleet against me, and he doesn't need me to find inner peace or contact my animal guide for him to be comfortable with me. He's seen me in pretty bad shape, and he wasn't afraid, and he didn't pity me--or if he did, he turned it into identification. He's the only person I've really been able to talk to since we've been out here. I know it's ridiculous to think that he could find me attractive, on this ship, with Kes and Kaplan and Henley and the Delaney sisters. He tells people that he and I are friends, but to Tom, that probably just means I'm un-fuckable. Great.

He had a harder time than anyone when we left Janeway and Chakotay, I think. Harry showed it more, and stuck his neck out about it, but Tom was really hurting--so much that he couldn't even talk about it, or lash out about it. I'm not sure exactly how he feels about Chakotay these days, after whatever happened between them in the Maquis and then that whole business with the Kazon and Jonas...but it's pretty intense. Lots of guilt, and wanting to measure up. It's not enough for him that Janeway thinks he's wonderful; he wants Chakotay to think so, too. He was trying his damndest to be a good officer, and do whatever Tuvok ordered, because he thought it was what Janeway and Chakotay would have wanted. But I know it was killing him. I think he was pretty upset that Tuvok put me instead of him on the away team to retrieve them, but he didn't say anything.

The day we reached the planet where we'd left them, Harry was bouncing around the bridge, but I don't know if it even occurred to him that Tuvok might let him beam down--I guess we all suspected Tuvok would go down himself, give the captain and commander the antidote, and turn himself in for whatever sort of discipline they chose. We knew Kes would have to go to administer the medicine, but Tuvok really shocked me when he told Harry and myself to report to the transporter room. I was going to ask, why me? It seemed obvious that he chose Harry because Harry made such an impact on the decision to contact the Vidiians, and Harry's still grateful--it made a big difference in his level of trust with Tuvok. I guess maybe Tuvok thought Chakotay might want to see me. Tuvok might have been trying not to think about Chakotay's feelings for Janeway, but I don't think he missed noticing how I felt about Chakotay. Vulcans catch on to a lot more emotion than they want to admit.

So we beamed down, knocked on their door, and didn't get any answer. We knew they were nearby because the ship's sensors had picked up their readings in the area--I suppose that what we should have done was sat down and waited for them to come home. But, since I was leading the away team, I felt like we should do something productive, so I ordered Harry and Kes to fan out and look for them in the immediate area. They wandered behind the shelter toward the deep woods, where they were getting some primate readings, while I took what looked like a deliberately carved path through the trees in the direction that my tricorder indicated led to a river.

Mentally, I was trying to piece together what we saw when we first arrived into a picture of their life there: the shelter, patched as if it had recently experienced some storm activity; some plants growing in a garden which also looked recent; no real sign of scientific work, which could mean that the captain had made a breakthrough, but could also mean that she'd already given up trying. There was some large object which looked like it was being carved into furniture sitting off to the side by the door, and some clothes--mostly Janeway's--drying on a line in back near the bathtub. It didn't look like they'd been in the shuttle since their arrival, and from what I could see through the windows, the shelter looked cozy...like they were comfortable there, at home.

I followed the water a little way, watching the currents and wondering whether they'd fished, until I remembered that Chakotay wouldn't eat fish. Maybe Janeway fished just to pass the time, like people used to do on Earth. How did they spend what must have been very long days here? Janeway had her research, and Chakotay appeared to have several little projects he was working on, but without the cosmos to explore and the ship to run--and without other people to talk to or the holodeck to distract them--they must have been bored out of their minds sometimes.

And what if they hadn't been getting along? It was possible--Janeway was such a stickler for routine and common sense, and Chakotay might have wanted to go off and meditate without warning her. She might have resented the chores, or he might have resented her research since he wasn't as qualified to do anything scientific, who knew what people might find to bicker about when they were stuck with each other and nobody else for the rest of their lives...

Then I saw them.

They were in the shade, which is why I didn't notice them immediately from a distance. Curled up, not really touching one another--his knee may have been bumping the back of her thigh, and his fingers uncurling against her back, accidentally. They weren't embracing, exactly.

But they were naked. Her hair was down, spread out above her head like a fan, as if she wanted it to dry while she was sleeping. One of her hands was curled under her chin and the other was resting on her thigh. She looked like she might have been chilly--her legs were partway drawn up, and her nipples were hard. Maybe she was just dreaming. He was more stretched out, like a protective wall behind her with one arm over his head, shielding her from whatever might come out of the woods.

He was as beautiful as I'd ever imagined--I'd seen him without his clothes a couple of times in the Maquis, once even walked in on him and Seska, but I never saw him relaxed like this. He had almost no hair on his body, and his skin was bronze in the shade, even darker than usual next to her soft white back--he looked almost as dark as me. And big, big hands and feet. His penis was big even flipped sideways and flaccid--of course I looked. I looked at his chest, and the curve of his ass, and the wave of muscle where his belly descended into his groin. His hair had grown some. He seemed to have lost weight, but that might just have been the position he was lying in.

She was beautiful too, maybe even more than I'd imagined because I never thought about it--I rarely saw her out of uniform, and in uniform she was always the captain. She looked so much more fragile without it, pale and thin, much younger. I guess I never wanted to think about the captain as someone who was smaller and more frail than me. And if I'd thought of her as beautiful, before, on the ship, I would have recognized the feeling on his face whenever he looked at her, and the way he looked for her whenever he entered a room. That wasn't only the interest of a first officer protecting his captain, but a man following a woman he can't get enough of. They looked like a painting--the dark green grass, the light blue towel they were lying on, the pink and gold of their skin all contrasting so that it almost didn't look real.

Or maybe it looked too real. I'm not sure what it was that made me know that I was seeing the aftermath of love, not just swimming. Maybe because her hair couldn't have spread out like that without someone else's hands, stroking and combing the strands into that radiant pattern. Maybe it was the position of his head curving towards hers. Or just how close together they were lying, without the slightest hint of discomfort or arousal. I was willing to bet that whichever one woke first would wiggle the couple of centimeters to touch the other, and press against the skin, maybe taste it. They were probably salty, and sticky like ripe fruit, and even if they were tired from splashing in the water and rolling in the grass, they would wake up, and fit themselves together--

I stepped backwards, not wanting to look away, but wanting to stop Harry and Kes from seeing. It was selfish really. I wanted the vision all to myself, though I said I was protecting their privacy. Maybe I was. The rest of the crew might have thought I'd misinterpreted whatever it was I saw. Sometimes, when they seem very comfortable together on the bridge, I think, maybe I did. Maybe that scene didn't mean what I thought. I bet Chakotay grew up swimming nude, and after enough time with him, alone with him, maybe she just stopped bothering with the suit.

But I don't really believe it. I don't think Kes does, either. When I stumbled back to where we'd separated and called the other two, telling them we had to get back to the ship right away, Kes immediately looked past me to where I'd left Janeway and Chakotay, with a surprised, happy expression on her face--she wasn't alarmed at my insistence that we leave, the way Harry was. Kes probably knows for sure, anyway, since she did their medical exams after they got back to the ship, but she would never violate patient confidentiality by telling anyone.

I didn't really have to spell it out for Tuvok. After we beamed back, I asked to speak to him alone. I told him that we didn't see them right off, we didn't want to go into their shelter unannounced, and it had occurred to me that just dropping in on them without any warning might be more difficult for them than if we gave them some notice that we were coming. We'd already talked about this before, of course, when we made the decision to beam down--Tuvok was afraid that if we gave Janeway too much notice of our impending arrival, she might demand to know how we'd gotten a cure, and order the ship out of there before any Vidiians could pursue it to the planet. We'd taken an awful risk telling Denara Pel what afflicted the captain and had forced us to leave her and Chakotay: if she'd told anyone else, other Vidiians could have shown up at the planet to try to take their organs.

Tuvok asked me if I knew where Janeway and Chakotay were, and I said, "I think I saw them from a distance." He didn't ask me why I didn't try to speak to them, so I left it at that. After a minute, he dismissed me so he could try to contact them by communicator. I don't think he was at all surprised. If anything I think he was hoping we'd stumble across them in just such a compromising position...though I'm not sure why I think that. I know he resents Chakotay, but I also think Janeway's happiness is very important to him. I wonder if that has anything to do with why he didn't beam down himself.

Now I'm not so sure we did the right thing, not letting them know we know. I can see that Chakotay's in agony, and I watch her holding herself back, because they think it's impossible to stay together like they were. If they knew we knew, they'd just have to deal with it, and go on from there. There would be no reason for secrecy, nor for them to keep up this ludicrous distance which is bad for the whole ship's morale as well as for them. I want Tom to drop the kind of remark I was afraid he'd let slip, early on, so she'll know we know. Probably she'll be horrified, but there won't be any way to take it back, and sooner or later she'll realize that it doesn't make a difference in how we think of her as our commanding officer, or of him.

Sometimes when I see her sitting alone in the mess hall, I want to go to her and say, Captain, we all know about you and Chakotay, let him make you happy. I can't do that right now--she's still my commanding officer, we're not friends. Not that kind of friends. Maybe we never will be. Still, one day I'm going to tell her, if nobody else does. Maybe if I find somebody. She'd be happy for me--Chakotay would, too, even if it was someone like Tom and he didn't completely approve. She'd tell me she was happy for me, and I could tell her then. I could say, you know, I wanted to get back home more than anything when we got stuck out here, I wanted it so much I disobeyed a direct order and risked my job. But this is our home now,and we have all changed. Even you, even if you don't want to see it--we can all see it. Don't be happy for me, be happy yourself, there's nothing greater you could do for this crew than that.

I don't know if she'd listen. She might pretend to misunderstand. Still, I owe it to her to tell her. I was the only one who saw them.


End file.
